A tour of a transformed chinatown, where vital restaurants and grocery stores soldier on

“When 42-year-old restaurant Hoy Wong closed in mid-February — it was one of the Cantonese old timers that line lower Mott Street — cookbook author Grace Young lamented the decline of Chinatown in a Food & Wine piece. She noted that the decrease in visitors had been a gradual one, as a result of gentrification, labor costs, and cheap prices. Now, she explained, fear of a then-remote disease had emptied the streets in a more visible way. And ended with a plea, ‘We’ve taken Chinatown for granted, assuming it will always be there, but if we don’t come to the rescue right now it could slip away.’ Little did she anticipate what was to follow,” reports Eater.